Glad we did! That was an exciting and well fought game against the 49ers. So pumped that my new town’s team is headed to the Superbowl! This is a reading of the seismographs UW placed under CenturyLink field (so clearly we win nerdiest football city on top of the NFC championship).

How is it mostly through November already? When planning things I’ve felt like Thanksgiving has been a moving target and now all of a sudden its snuck up on me and will be here next.week. Bring on the sweet potatoes, cranberry apple casserole and heaping loads of ham and tryptophan! I can tell it’s close, my heart is constantly swelling with gratitude and happiness.

A brief update:

I’ve been on my cardiology rotation at SCH. So thankful there are heart docs out there because every time they asked me if I could hear the murmur I just kind of had to nod, smile and trust their judgement that it was there. I’ll stick with things I can see (like teeth), thank you.

We had some sunshine! And it’s projected to go through the weekend! But seriously, this fall hasn’t been as bad as last year and I’m very thankful for that (but it still doesn’t stop me from wanting to snap a picture of it though).

Suzzallo library on main campus makes me simultaneously homesick and warmed my heart for reminding me about a certain Gothic Wonderland. Also Duke football is AMAZING!

This season is one of my favorite. Good food. Gratefulness. Fall smells. It’s just delicious. My dear mother instilled a solid sense of civic mindedness in us and since I can remember I’ve loved having opportunities to volunteer. My schedule recently hasn’t allowed me the flexibility to go exotic places or take part in large scale projects, but that’s the nice thing about giving, it can be done very well in your own backyard in very small amounts. You could argue that that just may be the best kind of volunteering.

I joined the Junior League of Seattle this year as a Provisional and so far the experience has an amazing outlet for me. My mom was in Junior League in Knoxville once upon a time and I have cousins in the Memphis league. Far from being the petty organization portrayed in The Help, for me, it’s the perfect combination of fellowship with wonderful women and easy packaged opportunities to do good. On Saturday I helped out with a work crew at Green Plate Special installing their new garden space in Rainier Valley Seattle. They’re an organization that specializes in curriculum based food growing and cooking skills for middle schoolers. My public health heart just swooned.

Freshly dug carrots

They’ve just moved to a fantastic new facility. We helped disassemble parts of the old garden and set up the new (pictured here

Seeds ready for planting.

They asked us to do a crazy picture.. and um, this is what we came up with.

Also, sadly without pictures because I’m a dunce and forgot; Jeff and I got to catch up with our friend Rebecca Fairchild while she was in Seattle for work. On Friday we took her to one of my favorite places in Belltown, Local 360, and got a chance to reminisce about the 10 or so odd years it’s been since we were all freshman together in Bassett. Thanks for a fun evening Rebecca! And it was nice to meet your sweet friend Jen too! So because I sucked and didn’t get pictures, here’s some throwbacks:

You may have the mistaken impression from my pictures that it’s always sunny here in Seattle and all my whining is superfluous. I assure you, it’s not. It’s just that I haven’t strengthened whatever gene these Seattleites posess to go do everything in the rain and be happy about it. We do do things in the rain (if we didn’t, we’d never leave the apartment)- the Ballard Market this weekend for example. I just am so rarely moved to pull out a camera (or phone) to document the longest deluge of my life.

Mt. Rainier from the University of Washington campus

But when the sun does shine here it moves me so. I stop my run, pull out my iPhone and just snap a picture to try and convey it. This has what living in slow Chinese water torture has done to me – I’m compelled to document the cloudless sky. Forgive me, it’s too, too pretty not to.

Cascades range and Mt. Rainier over I-5.

And the Mountain.. when she is out it’s all I can do to look away. Not only does she take up a vast part of the skyline – in an incredible way that only a telephoto lens could give you a good grasp on, she is ultimate witness that the skies are indeed as clear as they can be.

My phone washes this out, but the white space in the middle is full of mountain.

Where ever we end up from here, I’ll never take the sunshine for granted again.

What a nice, lazy-staycation! Jeff played hooky with me on Friday and we had breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe. Dungeness crab eggs benedict for him and lemon curd French toast for me – yum!

The sun was shining all weekend – it was perfect! I went on a 7 mile run around Lake Union on Saturday and then walked an additional two miles back home from Gas Works Park. It was nice to know I still had a long run in me.

Sunny skies from the University Bridge overlooking Lake Union

The Center for Wooden Boats and MOHAI in South Lake Union

MOHAI in South Lake Union looking North

Crossing the Bridge into Fremont, the Center of the Universe

Waiting for the Fremont Bridge to lower after letter a sailboat pass into Lake Union

Saturday was also our first opera of the season. I got Jeff tickets for Christmas because he always enjoyed going as a kid with his mom. We ate delicious Northwest inspired thalis at Poppy before the show and then headed down to McCaw Hall at the Seattle Center. We saw Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella) – it was fun and I enjoyed opera more than I thought I was going to.

We’ve been meaning to check out our local flea markets for a while now, but the intention to go always comes on a Wednesday and by the time the weekend is half gone we remember that’s what we wanted to do. Fortunately the Fremont market is on a Sunday so you can forget on Saturday and still make it.

It was full of flea market kitsch, typical street fair vendors and food trucks – perfect for a lazy Sunday morning perusal.

I almost bought an old National Geographic map of Africa with old names like Rhodesia, Belgian Congo and Tanganyika. I’m not exactly sure why I put it down and now that I think about it I might go back next week and actually get it.

We finished off our mini-day with passion fruit ginger ale and sharing a crepe from a food truck:

The prosciutto and brie crepe from Crisp Creperie was delicious! It was a perfect Sunday morning to take in some rare winter sunshine here.